Drug use in the Australian football league: a critical survey

Stewart, Bob, Smith, Aaron C. T and Dickson, Geoff
(2008)
Drug use in the Australian football league: a critical survey.
Sporting Traditions: the journal of the Australian society for sports history, 25 (1).
pp. 57-74.
ISSN 0813-2577

Full text for this resource is not available from the Research Repository.

Abstract

The Australian Football League (AFL), which arose of an expanded
Victorian Football League competition in 1991, has become the most
commercialised sports league in the nation. By 2007 it was attracting an
annual attendance of more than seven million fans, and annual turnover
had exceeded $280 million. At the same time its very success established
the ideal conditions for drug use. First, it provided an ultra-competitive
and hyper-masculine environment where high–risk behaviour was lauded
and the rewards for winning were significant. Second, the game became
scientised and medicalised as a bevy of coaches, physicians, psychologists,
trainers, and dieticians assisted players to secure a winning edge over their
opponents. Finally, the pharmaceutical industry introduced new drugs to the
marketplace, many of which built strength, improved endurance, heightened
awareness, and generally made people feel better.
These developments raise two salient questions. Firstly, how prevalent
has drug-use been in the AFL, and secondly, what has the AFL done about
it? This article aims to answer these two questions by mapping the evolution of the AFL’s drug policies through an examination of critical incidents and
cases. Although there has been an extensive analysis of the game’s social
and commercial development over the last 25 years,5 there has been no
examination of drug use in elite Australian Rules football competitions.